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<title>If you aren't here, how do I feel your touch? by emil (popps)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24796048">If you aren't here, how do I feel your touch?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/popps/pseuds/emil'>emil (popps)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Child Death, Corpses, Gap Filler, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Injury, Other, Planet Scar Syndrome | Geostigma, Psychosis, Slow Build, Terminal Illnesses, Vignette</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 11:00:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,066</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24796048</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/popps/pseuds/emil</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Geostigma pulls Cloud towards the future, but his losses keep pulling him back into the past.</p><p>Canon-adjacent vignette, set between FF7 and AC.<br/>(May be expanded in the future.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>If you aren't here, how do I feel your touch?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em> <strong>The roads are slick and the rain is poison.</strong> </em>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Midgar's flooding streets parted along the path of the bike, sending waves of water into his shoes. It inched further up his pant legs as the downpour found icy hold in the knees, then the thighs.</p><p>No use in a shiver. His muscles were taught as he curled over the roaring metal frame, face holding position in an almost-wince at the sharp bite of raindrops on his skin. What mattered was getting there. The other details could wait, left a problem for the future, preferably drier, version of himself to solve. Leaning in a little closer to the bike to absorb some of its warmth, his eyes strained against the inescapable veil of water draped over everything from street signs to entire buildings.</p><p>He'd have to feel it out, then.</p><p>Urgency was the only guard he really had from the formless threat of hypothermia that loomed in the blacked-out sky above. Just urgency, and the bike, he supposed. Memories attempted to lay over the drowning city streets like torn wallpaper, half-forming a map in his mind that he had little choice but to follow. Turn here.</p><p>Leaning toward the ground, he felt the brief moment of floating in slow motion, like a gentle boat on the water, while simultaneously choking on his stomach as it lurched violently into his throat. A hissed string of curses were lost amid much more pressing sounds, the bike's wheels desperately seeking solid ground.</p><p>
  <em> Nonononononono- </em>
</p><p>Reflexively, his inside leg shot out toward the ground, as if he were on a normal bicycle and simply needed to stabilize on a windy road. A sharp crack wrenched a strangled noise from his throat as his ankle was harshly snapped to the right and bounced off the pavement back to the foothold, where it landed much too hard. The hot pinlike sting of tears went unnoticed, muffled by far louder pain.</p><p>The air split with a terrible sound and blinding light that nearly threw him from the seat altogether. He pressed his body down onto the bike as much as he could, as if he could somehow instantly weigh more by simply wishing.</p><p>
  <em> Don't die here. </em>
</p><p>A second ear-splitting crack, as if the universe were being torn violently in half by the hands of a god. The bike found enough footing to shoot forward, facing the storm head-on once more.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>"I—can't stay."</p><p>It was intended to be a firmer rejection than his voice allowed. A doubtful glance was exchanged between the pair, a silent conversation of expressions taking place before their gazes returned to him. He couldn't meet their eyes, but felt the weight of them just the same.</p><p>It was his own weakness that kept him there, not their protests—though he'd be easily swayed by either of them if they tried. He pressed down the desire that rose within him, the desire to be stopped. To be held here. To have someone not let him go.</p><p>And yet, the other man relented before Cloud's resolve could crumble any further, letting out a defeated sigh and clapping a hand on his shoulder. "Guess it can't be helped. You have places to be! Just be sure to come home by curfew," he teased with a warm laugh that melted the world around them. Tension evaporated, replaced with the infectious positive energy that radiated from his smile. A large hand cupped the side of his face gently, and the familiarity of that touch nearly broke him, as a soothing tone murmured, "Take care of yourself."</p><p>"You waste so much time worrying," the young woman cooed with a sigh of her own. Green eyes glinted with amusement as she shook her head, gentle locks falling over her shoulders like waterfalls, a pink satin ribbon catching the light as it moved. "Get that serious look off your face, so grim. We'll see you again. Of course we will."</p><p>It was something he'd never been quite good at, telling her no. He felt his fingertips brush against the long leather sleeve, a makeshift hospital gown over this plague that crept along his veins like molasses. Pulses like the aura of an impending migraine would project one reality onto another- and becoming lost within them someday felt inevitable... he'd been lost before. The flash of her ribbon reminded him of his own, the memento turned tourniquet that slowed the progress of the cancerous rot better than he'd expected. If anyone were stronger than the Geostigma, it would be her.</p><p>Colors warped the two people before him for just a moment, a record skipping in his vision. A brief shake of his head restored them, and he tried to respond to the woman's prodding with a shy smile, his hand finding the latch for the door and leading him outside to the damp streets.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Thick. It always felt as if the air had a texture these days, heavy with smog, grease, and the wet cough of death. Often the difference between indoors and out felt not unlike plunging into murky water, complete with the brief moment of suffocation before more sensible responses took over and survival became possible again.</p><p>In darkened alleyways were corpses, sometimes clustered in piles to be disposed of, but more often laid out where they'd once stood, turning to a rancid black paste from the inside out as JENOVA's essence tainted the planet and viciously attempted to purge humanity with Her dying breaths.</p><p>Her target was cruel—the children born to her enemy. They suffered Her wrath, darkness crawling through their bodies in an agonizing march.</p><p>The purr of Fenrir welcomed him to his seat, and Cloud lowered his goggles over his eyes in time for the rain to pick up. The droplets stung his exposed skin, they itched, they burned. Holding out his hand, he let the water fall into his gloved palm, leaning his head back to stare up into the darkness above him. In the falsely-lit underbelly of the city, a black hole was carved out so neatly from the sky, one slice of Midgar having been consumed so the storm could break through to the slums below. Shoes splashed through puddles as bystanders sought cover from the rain, squealing in discordant agitation at the sudden downpour.</p><p>Cloud turned back to the door he'd come out of, and it didn't look the same.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p>
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